Tuesday, May 13, 2008

One too many lemons

In typical Amherst Town Meeting penny wise pound foolish mode last night the ageing-into-senility legislative body voted down $11,000 allow the Jones Library to open on Monday’s next year—you know the institution with a great Kids Room and extensive Special Collections with anything and everything pertaining to Miss Emily, the Belle of Amherst.

That argument took about an hour. But when the $1.2 million Capital Equipment article quickly followed with the $22,000 buried in it for a lawn mower at our expensive White Elephant Golf Course, hardly a fiscal conservative could be found.

If the Town Mangler had taken the privatization offer from Niblick Management last year the town would be guaranteed a check for $30,000 without any worries about the weather or expensive landscaping equipment, two-thirds of which is beyond its rated lifespan.

Thus, instead of investing an extra $22,000 now into a lawnmower, that money would be available for something like THE LIBRARY, with enough left for The People’s Republic to finance its Protest Parade next July 4’th.

Well last year, LSSE, the Recreation Empire that took over Cherry Hill operations (although they did run it from 1987-1990) after the Enterprise Fund was dissolved (owing the General Fund $1 million in losses over 15 or so years of operations) was quick to issue a press release proclaiming Cherry Hill was $7,000 “in the black”.

The Town Mangler crowed to the Springfield Republican “the course didn’t have to draw on tax support to help off set costs.”

Town officials of course ignored all the hidden costs from other parts of the budget (employee benefits, Club house insurance) and the fact that the Finance Committee had to come up with and additional $24,000 out of their emergency Reserve Fund to cover those losses, thus draining that account, so that the DPW could not tap it to do potholes during the month of June.

Yeah, where’s the profit? I have been asking that for twenty-one years.